Percussion concert shows the humanity in Cage's music

Members of red fish blue fish and the Percussion Group Cincinnati perform Cage's "Six" at the American University Museum Sept. 7 as part of the John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC. Cage's art is in the background. Photo: Christopher Dobey for the John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC

Members of red fish blue fish and the Percussion Group Cincinnati perform Cage's "Six" at the American University Museum Sept. 7 as part of the John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC. Cage's art is in the background. Photo: Christopher Dobey for the John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC

Tamzin Elliott with UC San Diego's Roger Reynolds following the premiere of her new work at the American University. Elliott studied with Reynolds while growing up Cardiff. Photo: Christopher Dobey for the John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC

Tamzin Elliott with UC San Diego's Roger Reynolds following the premiere of her new work at the American University. Elliott studied with Reynolds while growing up Cardiff. Photo: Christopher Dobey for the John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC

In John Cage’s “Living Room Music,” he uses ordinary household objects as percussion instruments and requires a trio of musicians who also vocalize.

In Tamzin Elliott’s “In Preparation for the Storm” movement III: “Hey Rain,” she takes that idea a bit further, employing body percussion, singing and an assortment of percussion instruments.

There was something intensely moving at a series of exhilarating percussion events Sept. 7 at the American University in hearing Cage, who would have turned 100 this week, and Elliott, who is 19, speaking to each other across time and generations.

Tamzin, who is from Cardiff and now a student at Bard College, and Cage, share a certain idealism, even optimism. Hearing the Percussion Group Cincinnati in “Living Room Music” turn a rhythmic round of cards into music you could dance to, and then Dustin Donahue, Ross Karre and Bonnie Whiting Smith of UC San Diego’s red fish blue fish delight in the equally unique and engaging challenges of “Hey Rain,” gave you hope.

The bottom line in the five-and-a-half hour percussion extravaganza employing several different spaces and surveying more than 20 pieces by Cage (plus Elliott’s tribute piece and also an impressive commissioned work by Ryan Bridge) was that by taking the ego out of the music, as Cage does, you allow the humanity to come in.

It sounds like a paradox, which it is, but the evidence was in the performances, which were part of the John Cage Centennial Festival and coordinated by Karre.

There are few musicians more collaborative by nature than percussionists. Perhaps all that time they spend in the back of an orchestra or behind a rock band makes them team players. They know how to get along.

Not that Cage ignored solo percussionists. He helped invent the solo percussion repertoire as well as the percussion ensemble. Steven Schick opened the festivities (following a lecture by Thomas DeLio) in whimsical fashion with Cage’s “Solo for Voice No. 15” from “Song Books.” (And don’t be fooled by the title.).

Employing an amplified typewriter, “Solo for Voice No. 15” requires the performer to type a statement by the French composer Satie 38 times, with the rhythmic sounds of the typewriter as the work’s musical content (although it also has an obvious theatrical element and an extra payoff if you know the text: Satie’s statement translates to, “The artist has no right to waste the audience’s time”).

But most of the evening was collaborative, employing the resources of the veteran Percussion Group Cincinnati (Allen Otte, James Culley and Russell Burge) and youthful red fish blue fish (Schick with his present and former graduate students Donahue, Karre and Smith, who are only students in the most elevated meaning of the term).

The Percussion Group Cincinnati has been frequent collaborators with Cage and has performed his music since the ensemble’s formation in the late 70s. That experience was evident in the way the group intuitively interacted with each other and their nuanced approach to “Amores I and II” and Amores III and IV” (which revealed Otte’s skilled approach to the prepared piano), and the “Quartet, I” with red fish blue fish and “Third Construction” with Ben Toth.